Michael Kalles On Communicating Your Way To Success During A Pandemic (#7)

Steve Wells: [00:00:00] This is Steve Wells. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:01] And I'm Jeffrey Feldberg. Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. 

Steve Wells: [00:00:06] This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth. Are you a business owner who is wondering how to either grow your business, sell it, or both?

Or maybe in today's environment, you're wondering how to make your business pandemic proof. Visit deepwealth.com to find out how you can master the strategies to grow and extract the deep wealth from your business. Visit www.deepwealth.com. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:26] Today, we have a real treat. We have Michael Kalles, who's the president of Harvey Kalles Real Estate Brokerage.

Michael's vision and leadership are a large part of the continued success of the company. For nearly three decades, Michael has built the company from $147 million in gross sales to almost $2.5 billion in 2019. One of Michael's core values is giving back to the community with Kalles Real Estate to supporting over 250 charitable organizations.

Steve Wells: [00:00:59] Jeffrey, before we play this interview, I think it might be worth it for us, to give the listeners a heads up of things to listen for. What I find so interesting is we're going to find Michael's businesses is real estate, and you may go, well, I'm not in the real estate business.

It doesn't affect me. But I think what you're going to hear is someone who has created a business that really. Is pandemic proof in so many ways. As he goes through and describes what he has done to prepare for that. We can't predict everything that's going to happen to us and we have to be ready for that.

And we, when we talk a lot about selling your business, you don't know when the best time is to sell your business. So, there's a lot of things to do and to prepare for that. Michael's going to point out, some of those items to us. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:01:43] Steve, it was fascinating. As we're going through the interview, you know, at Deep Wealth, one of the things that we continually say is keep your business forever or sell it tomorrow. But when you follow the strategies, and these are the same strategies that we used to grow our e-learning company. And you'll remember from past episodes, we said that one year in our eLearning company was equivalent to seven years in regular companies because of the high growth that we had.

So when you find a strategy that works, you keep with it and you move forward with it. And when your business is prepared. You have choice and choice is such a powerful thing, and it's just amazing. Steve, you remember the part where Michael is just talking about how the staff ended up trusting him and the family.

Steve Wells: [00:02:39] Yeah. Listen how he has, created, innovation and not just technical innovation, but the ability to adapt and change quickly. I mean, the staff and, and what he's doing with his staff and, and the care that he's showing to his staff and how they can pivot very quickly, even in their mission statement. I mean, they did this, in a day . But, that pivoting and that, innovation and adaptation, how quickly they did that is what's going to make them, get through this very easily.

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:03:13] You're absolutely right and a deep wealth. One of the things that we say, whether it's a pandemic or a booming time, that regardless, you must master the ability to pivot your business because when you can pivot your business, not only is it terrific for today and even better for tomorrow. But you change your culture.

You instill a sense in your culture that the only thing constant is going to be change. And as you listen to Michael talk about the family business, and they've been at this for over a half a century, from when he stepped in to when his family created it earlier. That culture and that ability to pivot the business, it comes through loud and clear. As you listen through the interview, pay attention to how Michael and the team have grown in a business that has adopted the ability to pivot. it's something that every business owner can learn from and model in their own businesses and profit from that.

Steve Wells: [00:04:17] Jeffrey, great points, why don't we play this recording for our listeners and, see what Michael's doing.

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:04:22] Michael, it's a privilege and an honor to have you with us today.  Before we get going, why don't we take a step back and have you tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background. 

Michael Kalles: [00:04:33] My name is Michael Kalles. I work at Harvey Kalles Real Estate. I've been full time for 29 years. I did an undergraduate at Western Ontario and an MBA at the Schulich School of Business, a family business. Started by my father 63 years ago. People think we specialize in the ultra-high end. we certainly make sales there, but we do sales at every price point.

We've got 300 salespeople and 30 full time support staff. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:05:00] You know, Michael, if this were a different time and we weren't working through our way through this pandemic, this would be a different conversation on the family business and how you've built it. 

As our business owners and the world at large is figuring out this whole COVID-19. From a big picture view, where do you think things are going on the real estate side. 

Michael Kalles: [00:05:25] I think right now we're going to be in a place where things are on pause. Unit sales, along the Eastern seaboard. in the U S are down about 70%, but prices have not come off more than about a point and a half. There's a downward pressure on price when there's an oversupply and no demand. We're not at that point at all. There was a very small supply of properties available for sale prior to this happening.

Now it's just exacerbated. The problem is sellers don't want to put the properties on the market unless they have to, and they bought firm, and they need a place. They need their finances to purchase the home that they bought from, or in the opposite direction. So. That's the short term, medium and long term.

I'm very bullish about the real estate market. I think that it is, by far the best investment that most people have made in their life. Unless they're a sophisticated, stock player who've timed the market and hit everything perfectly.  The nice benefit, if you look at most people, if you bought and held a home for seven years.

You've made money on it, no matter when you've bought it, when you've sold it, as long as you've held it. I don't think the same can be said for stock portfolios. And the best part about a house is you get to live in it, you can't do the same with a stock portfolio. So medium and long-term, I'm very bullish on the real estate market.

Steve Wells: [00:06:47] So Michael, this may not be in your sweet spot, but to compare the residential real estate to commercial, it sounds like residential has got a little bump here. What about your understanding of what commercial is going to look like? 

Michael Kalles: [00:06:58] Yeah, we have a full commercial department with 15 full time salespeople, and our family is in the commercial side of it. Commercial is also on pause. There are certainly opportunists, both institutional and individual who are, you know seeing opportunities in the marketplace, but for the most part, a commercial is also on pause. again, if you were to ask me, how do I feel about commercial, medium and long-term, very strongly, you see, with industrial, I mean, I'll just go through some of the percentages. You know, we were looking at, residential apartments, less than a percent and a half vacancy, industrial, less than 2%.

With all of this online shopping, you need logistics and industrial real estate has never been stronger. Not at this moment, but again, medium and long-term. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:07:47] Michael, at Deep Wealth, one of the things that we focus on is helping business owners put strategies in place that will help them grow if they want to keep the business forever, sell it tomorrow, or do both.

The strategies work both in terrific times. Also, in challenging times or even a pandemic. So, this would be very contrarian to what's going on out there. If I was a business owner, should this be at time I would look at to either rent some space, now I might get a better, a better deal than a would or more selection than it would otherwise, or even buy some commercial properties right now?

What do you think? 

Michael Kalles: [00:08:27] You have to base it on your needs.  I'd like to break it down from institutional to individual. So let's first start with the individual. If I'm an individual, looking for commercial, and it was in my strike zone to say, Hey, you know what? I'd like to have a retail spot in a good commercial area with an apartment above, and I've been thinking about it for a long time.

Are there going to be opportunities in the short term? Yes. You see Institutions across the United States are putting funds together right now to gather assets. So I'm not the only one who's bullish on the market, a medium and long-term. But again, let's use me as an example. So, I'm a real estate company and I say to myself, okay, so, we just opened up an office in a very high-end area.

If I'm thinking to myself. I'm not interested in having an office in area A is now the time that I'm going to rent space in area A because I'm going to get a better deal. Probably not. I'm going to follow my, the guidelines that I'm running my business on currently. And if it's in my sweet spot to rent space than I would do it, but I wouldn't do it specifically because I think there's great deals. I think the deals are actually few and far between because most people are quite bullish on the market and they realize it's going to come back.

This is not something that was economy driven. The challenge is that we're going to see, hospitality restaurants, live shows, the airline industry.

They're going to be hit very hard for a short period of time, hopefully shorter than longer. And that's going to affect the economy and in terms of those who are buying and selling, and those who have been, hurt financially in the stock market. So, there are going to be, people who have just been absolutely punished by this situation.

But again, it's an outside situation that wasn't economy driven, like the 08 capitol meltdown. 

Steve Wells: [00:10:16] What have you seen and do you think some of this will catapult that, technological advancement, even at a faster pace in the real estate world?

Michael Kalles: [00:10:25] Steven, thanks for asking that. It's interesting you talk about that. Late last night I received an email from one of our salespeople and it was a forward from one of her clients who said, wow, thank you so much. 

This is incredible. We did a flip book, so to describe it, what you have in it is a combination of high-end digital images. You've got a virtual tour, you've got a, doll's house view, it would be like seeing a home with no front facade on it. So, you can enter any room with your mouse and you can actually walk through the property.

So, it's not 3D. It almost feels like 4D. And then of course you've got moving images, like a subway coming through, and it talks about areas, walk scores and things that are attractive about certain areas. Hockey rinks, places of worship, grocery stores, coffee shops. All of this in one link.

And what we're finding now is this is going to catapult our industry, and frankly not kicking and screaming, into the future from a digital standpoint. We started that probably about two years ago. We used to have something called caravan. When I first started working every Monday after the sales meeting, you'd load into cars and you'd go from one area of the city to the next. And it was important because you have to educate yourself on the product, what was available. Today, time is our only asset and it's everybody's real asset in real estate.

How are you going to utilize your time? So, we created a digital caravan, so agents on Sunday, send them to our head of marketing. Any property that's on the digital caravan. At the end of our sales meeting, we have 60 seconds for each property and they provide a digital tour with music in the background, and the people in the meeting go through six properties.

They educate themselves what's happening in the marketplace, and they don't leave their chair. And so, I think, yes, this is the first, this is the thin edge of the wedge that's going to catapult the industry more into the digital age. But it will never, in my humble opinion, replace the face to face, which I think is still the magic.

And you can see that today with all the digital that we have, which is exceptional, the market is still down 70% in unit sales, and that's because we don't have the face to face showings and we don't have the face to face meetings with clients. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:12:37] Michael, let's continue along that. Sometimes it takes a pandemic to change societal norms and how people think of the buying behavior. If you fast forwarded five years from now, 10 years from now, I mean it's anyone's guess. What's your best guess of how the industry is going to change and how consumer buying patterns will change when it comes to real estate. And how technology can lead, an important role?

Michael Kalles: [00:13:04] It's a good question. I think, you know, if you look forward into the future, five or 10 years. Let's make a, you know, a God-willing assumption that this is completely behind us and people are back to comfortably, integrating in our world as we did, before the middle of March, where you're flying freely to places you haven't been and going to live shows . 

With that assumption. I think the technology will continue to play a role, but it will never replace the face to face. You know, I have to tell you again, I've only been at this for 29 years, but I can tell you this, we have seen so many different concepts come in and out of this industry.

What they call, list and leave,  where they'll say to the seller, Hey, you know, we'll charge you 10% of what another standard brokerage will charge you, but we're just going to put it on the MLS and you can deal with it and you'll handle the showings.

Your lawyer will do the agreement of purchase and sale. They're out of the industry and if they're not out there playing a very small role, the traditional brokers are still, in there. And you know, there's a great, a quote that came out many years ago, it said that technology might replace non technologically advanced agents. Now I say that, that's a quote. I believe it only to a certain extent. I'm thinking about one of our salespeople who doesn't know the difference between social media and a standard newspaper, and she's one of our top agents and what she provides, which You know, never goes out of fashion is incredible. Customer service. I could give you 10 examples of it, but I don't want to bore you or your audience, but the fact of the matter is, she goes, she cares.  She's there. Aftercare service, something needs taken care of.

She takes care of it. She arranges, pays for it. Their house is pristine and perfect by the time they move in, thanks to her. And so, she's not out there on social media outlets. She's there doing it Old school, face to face. 

Steve Wells: [00:14:59] Michael, what do you think or you see in the area of marketing?

You're touching on that? I mean, of course the, you know, the traditional ways, you know, a realtor, if I want to list my home or I, there's a, there's a certain firm that has a reputation in a certain geographic area or a certain price point, I know there's a lot of lead generation services that are out there Marketing. I know there's need, I live in Florida for attracting customers from around the world, or at least around the U S and into certain areas and how they do that. I've seen high end auctions where people put their house up and you know, they have these virtual auctions that take place and you know, all kinds of crazy things.

what, what do you, what do you think about that? 

You know, it's interesting, I always say this, that you know, everybody has their level of comfort, so let's take it to the ground level with salespeople. So, you know, I have certain salespeople who came to us from other companies where all they worked on was lead gen.

Michael Kalles: [00:15:53] So they had a smaller commission structure, but the company provided them leads, and the conversion rate is around 1% so you make a hundred calls, you get one lead, and. That's what they do. They call it as a great line, grinded out one by one by one. When I got into the industry before I joined Kalles, there's a gentleman by the name of Bob Proctor, and he believed in cold calling.

Hi Mr. Feldberg it's Mike Kalles from Harvey Kalles Real Estate. If I could provide you an offer, that was acceptable to you, would you consider listing your home with our company? Boom. Hung up. Hi Steven. How are you? It's Michael Kalles. And on and on it went and there are those who believe in that. Now with a do not call list, that's certainly fallen off, but you talk about auctions.

There's a company called Concierge Auctions. They've sold high end homes, they had another one in the Four Seasons, a condo unit. Some sold successfully, some didn't get a bid. But there's so many different areas, and frankly, we've seen most of them.

The word prospecting sometimes can have a negative connotation. But the way I consider prospecting is doing something that you consider, is sustainable for you, makes you comfortable, makes it something that you feel good with.

So prospecting, I'll use that example of that salesperson in my office who believes in customer service. Her name is Carol Anne. So, and when I say believes in it, I mean lives, it, breathes it. So her way of prospecting is treating each client with incredible. wow service. So how does she gain future clients?

Those clients that she treats well are writing letters saying how incredible she is, how she went above and beyond and they become her greatest fans. They're telling their brothers, their cousins, their nephews. You have to use Carol Ann. She's incredible.

Let me tell you five examples. It's that concept of reticular activator. If you're looking to buy a minivan at Toyota, every car you see on the road as a Toyota minivan when you've just sold or bought a home, that's the time you're talking about real estate, and that's her way of prospecting. So, everyone does things differently.

I've got another salesperson. He believes in volunteering. He believes in joining four or five boards. Now he does it out of the goodness of his heart, but someone who's on the board with him sees him as being a capable person who cares about a cause that is near and dear to their heart and finds out, Oh, you know, John's in real estate.

Oh really? You know, John's a guy who I really see eye to eye with when I sell my house or someone in my family or my sphere of influence, I'm going to refer John. So that's his way of prospecting. And I want to use the word prospecting. Again, not in a negative light, but a way of describing how people leverage their career to the next level. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:18:30] Michael, a lot of nuggets of wisdom that you've shared with us and for our listeners, I hope your takeaway is find whatever works for you. Maybe it's in style, maybe it's out of style. It doesn't matter if you're passionate about it, run with that, and results will follow when you combine your passion with the ability to solve problems.

So, Michael, let me ask you, you've been at this for nearly three decades. You mentioned it's a family business that you stepped into and the business has been around a lot longer. You've seen boom times; you've seen challenging times. Let's focus inward for a moment, so at Kalles, have there been some strategies or best practices that you've incorporated into your business when you've gone through a crisis or a challenging time economically, or in this case, a pandemic? And for our listeners, what would have been some of those strategies that you put in place in many days or years before that's been helping you now through this pandemic? 

Michael Kalles: [00:19:31] That's an excellent question, Jeffrey. Thank you. you know, it's interesting.

Look, when I came into the business, we're talking about, you know, the early nineties, late eighties, early nineties. And as they say, if you didn't get crushed in real estate in the late eighties, early nineties, then you weren't in it. And. You know, for the first five years I worked with no salary and there's a good chance this year it might be the same situation.

We feel this is a defining moment for our company and our family. And we have a goal. The goal is simple. We want to get through this year and make sure that our team is taken care of. So, at every public function that we do, whether it's our sales rallies or, social events, parties, sales meetings, anything.

I always thank our support staff, their family. We've had people in sales. We've had, 41 people over 25 years. that's my last best guests and incorporate in that 41 is support staff. That's been with us for over 25 years. So, we're constantly talking about how they're part of the family and all.

Thank you for going above and beyond. You know, someone brings in an offer at 4:45pm and our support staff is there till six o'clock. Making sure that offer gets done and completed for that agent. They might miss a moment, with their friends or family, but they're there and they're committing themselves and really have been so loyal.

So, our goal is simple. We, as a family, corporately, are prepared to "take it on the chin", financially this year. But we don't want our support staff. So, we've not laid off a single full-time support staff person with our firm and have no intentions to do so. If this year is a year, like it was, in the early nineties when I started where we needed to plow personal income into the company to "keep the lights on and keep the brand alive", we're prepared to do that. We're 63 years in the business and God willing let it be another 120 but, when you're in this, when you're in this business, there's no guarantees. So, our goal is simple. We want to make sure that our team gets through this.

I'm spending my days, and that's why I said my time is tight today, and I apologize for that, but I'm spending my day speaking to our salespeople. Helping them, coaching them, engaging with them. We have, three calls a day where our salespeople are, you know, zoom calls, different education. We've got a psychologist coming on Monday.

I have executive meetings. I'm meeting with central brokers, brokers from around the world, best practices. So, the goal for us is simple, Jeffrey is to get through this and. We're not concerned if we get scraped, we're prepared for this. we're well-financed. Thankfully, we've never worked with a bank loan.

the buildings that we own, we own without mortgages. And if their mortgage, they're between, family companies. So, we don't believe in sort of, flying by the seat of our pants and expanding. We've never franchised, we have no partners. It's our family. And it's a privilege to be in this position.

But we thought about that carefully. you know, many people have said, Oh, we'll finance you. you know, and, and expand, expand, expand. We can expand. And we've expanded from one office when I started to six offices today. But we've expanded our way corporately owned and without funding and financing. So, we're absolutely prepared for this and we are prepared to go the long mile no matter what it takes. The only thing that we're not prepared to do is negatively financially affect, our support staff. And we really want to see our sales team, get through this. And that's why we're dealing with each one of them individually.

My sales manager spends her day, and I mean this literally calling every single salesperson A to Z, Z to A, A to Z and Z to A. That is her role and, you know, a call comes in, one of our older salespeople has a, you know, a challenge. She can't go out because she's had some health challenges shopping.

We're sending a personal shopper taking care of it, making sure that her shopping is taken care of, that she doesn't have to leave. Everything is sanitized. Everything's brought to her door. But if we weren't calling we wouldn't know. So, my sales manager, bless her, said, Oh, Michael, that's so kind of you.

I said, no, actually it's kind of you. Because if you didn't tell me about the situation, I wouldn't have known about it. So that's the philosophy that we're running by Jeffrey. This is not, and never has been a financial endeavor. Our family business is a family business in the truest sense of the word. We don't look at our salespeople, our support staff as numbers especially when numbers are down.

Perfect. Let's let go of our support staff, or let's cut their hours, or let's cut their wages. Or no, we don't look at it like that. It's completely different.  If we were a public company, we'd be scrutinized right now. And you know, my dad and I probably be thrown on the street, but thank God we have no partners. And, we call the shots and that's the way we see the world. 

Steve Wells: [00:24:20] We ask people how to make your business pandemic proof and ask them to look back in the past. But it seems to me that that's exactly what you've done. And a lot of people that we've talked to said, you know, you need to have reserves.

And what you're displaying right now is you have, you have the reserves to weather the storm, and so then you're not over leveraged. And so those are really valuable lessons that you've already put in place for your company. Everyone is doing a couple things. If they're going to survive, it seems to me, you're doing them all.

They're, they're looking at ways to cut cost and waste that they can, that they can. And they're looking for creative ways, and then they're trying to be innovative and the innovation is really what's going to be so important going forward. While innovation might have the wrong connotation when you describe what you're doing, but what you, what you're doing is high touch, spending a lot of time with people, making sure everything is working.

And I think that's really valuable even for us who are not in the real estate business, but to look at your business philosophy and think about how that could be applied to my business regardless of whatever it is. 

I commend you for that. I think it's really, really powerful. 

Michael Kalles: [00:25:30] Thank you. And I, you know, you talked about innovation.

I think that's important. and just to close the circle on that, you know, everything that I described from the very beginning of the conversation related to that client who was saying, Oh, thank you so much. It really brought her home alive. You felt like you were actually going through the property.

Well, to me that's critical. You know, we've told our salespeople, right now it's health first. Real estate is 20 rungs down the ladder. So, we are telling our people live showings should be the absolute last resort. So, we've created an 18-page document. We call it the master document, where we have indemnities and we have guidelines.

We have signs to put on the door, or, you know, we've got three shipments of masks. One just arrived actually today for our salespeople who were in the field. So, safety is first. But what we're saying is technology is critical in order to facilitate sales in this marketplace. And there are people who have to sell.

Give that example of someone who's bought with a closing May 15th and you know, for $1.5M and they're selling their house for $1.4M If they don't have that million for, they won't be able to close on the property they bought, and then it creates a domino effect all the way down the line. So, the technology is crucial.

And I'm happy you brought that up, Steven, because innovation in this time is very, very important and we're trying to lead the pack in that. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:26:49] Okay. Michael, you're chock full of these incredible insights, and I want our listeners to key in on something that is just coming through loud and clear. And Michael, it's your communication, as you said earlier, you're phoning your sales people A to Z and Z to A and letting them know that you're there and that you care.

Or for your support staff that they're going to have a year that's unaffected because you made your business pandemic proof, and you have the wherewithal and the resources to keep everything moving forward as it should, so that they have that confidence that they can put food on the table and that their lifestyle from a financial perspective is going to continue to be the same today as it was yesterday.

What's important for our listeners, and perhaps you can talk about this is that long-term success is not an accident. It's not a onetime thing. 

It's a habit. It's a daily habit that becomes a weekly habit, a monthly habit, a yearly habit. It's just a consistent habit, day in, day out, even the smallest of things.

Hey, how you doing today? Just calling in to make sure everything's okay, which is incredible. Where did you get the insights for the communication that you do? Because it sounds like between you and the support staff, you're not really a real estate company. You're a caring company, and real estate happens to be in the middle of it.

So how did that come about and how do you see that going forward as we work our way through this pandemic. 

Michael Kalles: [00:28:18] That's a good question. I think that communication is crucial. You know, our tagline for our company has been invest in your dreams and we've put that on hold and we've replaced it with, we're here, two words, we're here and that says a lot. And I think to us, you know, you asked a specific question. You know, it's interesting. I look back at my life, you know, was it a school? Was it a, you know, going to undergrad or business school or this? I think from a personal level, I know this might sound strange, but you know, I grew up in a summer camp.

And our four kids are still there. Hopefully it will happen this summer. But I learned a lot,  from being a counselor to the older, the oldest kids. you know, for, for them it was important that they got accepted back to camp or would they get on tennis staff or ski staff when they wanted to.

So, it was different. It wasn't like, hey, are they going to make a sale so. To me, communication is the most important thing. I don't feel as though I've taken a formal education in it. It's just something that I've always realized is the best way, of achieving what you want to achieve in life, whether it's in relationships or professional, et cetera.

But working with these kids helped me a lot. It really did. You know, I was, I think, I'm trying to remember the exact number. I'm going to guess. I think I probably had, let's say 45, kids that were 16 years old and they were counselors in training. So they were trying to learn the lessons of what it would be like to be in charge of kids themselves the following year.

And conveying to them what was the most important elements. How the child that you're taking care of, that you're making decisions upon, that child, their parents would gladly lay down their lives for it. This is not just a fun type of carefree job. It's critical that you take care of these children and I guess my communication between the kids and the staff members who were evaluating them at different stages of their path as a counselors in training, it really helped me, and it's interesting to say that you'd figure, I would say, Oh, what it was for sure was my MBA. I actually talk about camp as being a better training ground for me then it was, than my formal education. And so, I know that probably sounds strange, but that's really where I feel I learned a lot. 

Steve Wells: [00:30:45] I'm aware your time constraints, Michael, sorry, I don't want to make this too long, but is there something that you'd like to say that I don't want our listeners to miss?

If there's something that you really want to make sure that they hear in this time, that you'd give them some advice. 

Michael Kalles: [00:31:00] Yeah. I mean, look, I wish I created the. The words, this too shall pass. But I didn't. But it's, it's wonderful advice.

But I think one of the most important things is, and it's interesting because every night at nine 20 a group of friends of mine from the office, they're friends, they happen to be salespeople. And there's about eight of us. And we get on, and sometimes we talk about light things and you know what did you eat for dinner.

And other times, like United school, we spoke for an hour and 20 minutes on what this pandemic can teach us. We can't control things that occur outside of us, but we can control our reaction to them. And this is a devastating situation from a health perspective, from an individual perspective, I think it's important that all of us take time during this pause in our lives to really prioritize what's important.

What is it that's crucial to you? What do you miss most about your time now being an isolation compared to your life when it was roam the earth freely without a care in the world, and recognize those priorities and spend your time on that. I read a great quote actually is from a New York realtor, and he was saying, remember that every reaction that you have, every decision that you make is going to be scrutinized by the world.

But more importantly. Years from now and in the future, it's going to be, I don't want to use the word scrutinize. It's going to be reviewed by you. You have to look in the mirror and say, how are my decisions during that time? Am I proud of what I did? Am I proud of what I learned? Am I proud of the way I conducted myself personally and professionally?

Did I learn? Did I spend my time wisely? And I said this on a sales call. We run our sales meeting, by Zoom now. And I said, the one thing I can't stand is wasted time. I just can't stand waste of time. And I gave an example. I said to me, having a full day doesn't mean working all day. So, if I'm working, and then, our son says, hey dad, can you come outside?

I want to shoot pucks in the driveway, if I spend a half an hour, an hour with them, that's not wasted time. That's a great utilization of time. So. But to me, if you ask my kids, Hey, you know, you've been in this house 15 years, when was the last time you saw your dad sitting on the couch and watching TV? The answer is, I've never seen it, and they never will see it.

That's not my idea of utilizing time. Now. I don't know if I should be proud of that, but I can't just sit and watch TV. I'll watch TV when I'm working out, but it has to be to multitask. The bottom line is, is that I believe that during this time. It's not a time to waste time. It's a time to make the most of the time that you have.

And that would be what I would convey. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:33:53] Michael terrific words of advice and insight. You know, usually we ask the question, if there's one thing that you could tell everyone what to do and you can only pick one thing, what would that be? But I think you just answered that and that, that, that has been terrific.

So, as we wrap this up and we can hear your phone going off in the background and you're a busy guy, you have all the communications coming in exactly like you said, where can people find you? 

Michael Kalles: [00:34:21] Sure. I'll give you my website is harveykalles.com.

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:34:35] A brave soul sharing his email and just shows your openness and how you really say what you do and do what you say on the communication side. Michael, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share your insights and wisdom. Please remain healthy and safe, and keep on doing what you're doing. It's absolutely wonderful. 

Michael Kalles: [00:35:01] Thank you. Thank you both. I got a lot of respect for both of you. Thank you for taking the time. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:35:05] Thank you. Take care. 

Michael Kalles: [00:35:06] All the best.